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Experimental Ovarian Cancer Vaccine Offers Hope for Cancer Patients

Sarasota Memorial Hospital (www.smh.com) has become the first site in the world approved to begin enrolling patients in an international clinical trial testing a personalized ovarian cancer vaccine for newly diagnosed women. Developed by Prima BioMed, the vaccine – Cvac – is designed to help patients’ immune systems prevent cancer from recurring after traditional surgery and chemotherapy.

Sarasota, FL, February 02, 2012 --(PR.com)-- It’s one of the most deadly forms for gynecological cancer, and until now, women with ovarian cancer had few options after treatment to keep it from recurring.

This month, Sarasota Memorial became the first site approved to begin enrolling patients in an international clinical trial testing a personalized ovarian cancer vaccine for newly diagnosed women.

Developed by the Australian biotechnology company Prima BioMed, the custom made vaccine (which uses the patients’ own white blood cells) has been developed to help patients’ immune systems prevent their cancer from recurring after traditional surgery and chemotherapy.

"This is a very personalized approach to immunotherapy,” said GYN oncologist James Fiorica, medical director of Sarasota Memorial’s women’s cancer program and principal investigator of the local trial. “The vaccine we’re studying is designed to stimulate the patient's own immune system to prevent a recurrence of the cancer. That is an exciting development in treatment, since traditional treatment methods like chemotherapy or surgery often kill cancer cells but they often return with stronger resistance.”

The vaccine, called Cvac™, is one of several personalized cancer treatments currently being studied around the world, but it is the only cancer vaccine made from dendritic cells and mucin-1 proteins found in large amounts in ovarian tumor cells. The experimental vaccine programs the body’s immune system to find and destroy recurrent cancer cells.

It is a Phase II/III trial (meaning it has passed Phase I safety studies) that will be conducted across multiple continents over the next couple of years. Randomized and placebo-controlled study, half of the patients enrolled will receive the vaccine and half a placebo injection as the control group. The purpose of this trial is to further evaluate the safety and efficacy of Cvac compared to today’s standard of care in ovarian cancer patients who are in remission after first or second-line therapy.

Sarasota Memorial was the first site in the world approved to begin enrolling patients in the study. It is being led by Dr. Fiorica, the study’s principal investigator, in conjunction with Sarasota Memorial’s Oncology Research Department and Suncoast Communities Blood Bank, which will assist in collecting dendritic cells from enrolled patients in a process called Leukapharesis.

Dendritic cells are a type of white blood cell that rev up the immune system to fight off the cancer and slow tumor growth. In the clinical trial, each patient’s personalized vaccine will be made from dendritic cells and protein taken from her own tumor, at a specialized lab in California. The vaccine, which will be developed while the patient is undergoing treatment, will be administered once a month for six months after treatment has been successfully completed, with follow-up injections later in the year.